Earlier this week, a rather unfortunate fellow by the name of Mohamed Morsy Ahmed received a five year sentence in the Irish courts for the crime of having, in his possession, too many passports. Mr. Ahmed was intercepted by the authorities in Dublin Airport and found to have, on his person, some thirteen sets of travel documents. These documents, it transpired, did not belong to him, but to 13 people who had, that very day, presented to Irish immigration authorities with no documents of their own at all, and applied for asylum.
The state contended, and the court agreed, that Mr. Morsy Ahmed, as part of a money making scheme, was actually doing the migrants a favour in return for money: He got them on flights, pocketed, with their consent, their travel documents, and instructed them to present themselves as stateless to the authorities at immigration.
In such cases, as we know, the Irish State’s attitude is most conciliatory indeed – rather than applying the rules that might be applied to you or I, and simply chucking these people back on a plane, the Irish state immediately entered them into the asylum system, and transported them to a welcoming centre for processing, before sending them on, inevitably, to Boyle or Nenagh or some other provincial backwater where they might safely live out the next few years in a hotel with a leaky roof, making good income for the local bigshot who bought the place to “renovate” it last year.
But then, for once, the arrest of Mr. Morsy Ahmed intervened. The documents were found.
It transpired that several of these stateless migrants were not, in fact, first timers. Several of them had actually already been granted asylum in other EU countries, but, having found those places not to their liking, had decided to chance their arms in Ireland. The state now had the proof, via the recaptured documents, and the chance to return them to whence they had come with a “nice try buddy, but you can’t be doing that” and a pat on the back.
And so it was that the authorities were despatched to pick them up. We will let Courts News Ireland pick up the story from there:
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard the group was taken to a reception centre to begin the asylum application process but contact was lost with them the day after they arrived in Ireland.
— Courts News Ireland (@courtsnewsIRL) December 9, 2022
“Contact was lost”.
In other words, what we have here is a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie: The state took 13 asylum seekers into its care, transported them to a reception centre, and then simply mislaid them. We have 13 missing persons, apparently.
At this point, one might surely begin to wonder about state security. While these 13 persons, it transpired, were simply migrants chancing their arms, how was the Irish State to know that they were not, for example, 13 extremists hell-bent on some act of terrorism against an American target on Irish soil? The state had no idea who they were, or from where they came, and, nevertheless, treated them so carelessly that they have been able, it seems, to simply disappear.
The working theory of the state, according to the evidence given in court, is that these 13 enterprising people had never intended to remain in Ireland, and, in the best traditions of the border counties, have simply made a break for the border at the first sign of the authorities. They’re likely England’s problem, now. But that is, it should be stressed, simply a theory.
When reading this story, the other day, I posed a simple question on social media which, with your indulgence, I will repeat here: How, exactly, is Helen McEntee still the Minister for Justice?
This story, after all, is a bona fide scandal: First, that people can casually toss away travel documents and be rewarded for it by being transported to a welcoming centre. Second, that such people are monitored so slightly, and with such little care, that they can simply disappear.
This is a matter both of justice, and of state security: The 13 interlopers, by virtue of falsely having claimed to “lose” their documents, broke the law. They did not lose their documents. We know this because the unfortunate Mr. Morsy Ahmed, the one tulip in the scheme dumb enough to get caught, is doing 5 years of chai lattés, or whatever you get in Irish prisons nowadays, for his trouble. We have 13 criminals on the loose, in the meantime, who’ve escaped untouched for their crookery.
And in terms of state security, I would re-iterate: If 13 migrants can execute this plan, then you can be sure that 13 lunatics intent on blowing up an American plane at Shannon Airport can do the exact same thing.
At all levels, this case is an indictment of the system overseen by the Minister for Justice.
But then, so is sentencing in general. So is the anti-social behaviour in Dublin. So is the recent explosion in burglaries. So is the nonsense stream of woke legislation emanating from her Department. Why is she still the Minister for Justice?
Beats me, but do you know she was the first Minister ever to take Maternity Leave?
Girl power.